The Blanket Universe
by nothing-chan
Summary: Because sometimes you did not need razors or once inch of water or a bottle of pills, you did not need an IV or a personalized lunch menu or one hour of yoga a day, you needed the universe and its soothing embrace, like hospital blankets wound around your skin.


"_We're all struck by the beauty and majesty of the natural world about us, the trees, the sky, and the beauty of the sunset; it is awesome in its majesty. How can we make sense of it all?"_

Alfred slid his arm across his pant leg, leaving a trail of friable popcorn butter and air weight popped kernels down the fabric, but Arthur watched the television and not the mess he was making, lips cemented together in unspoken quips.

The clock chimed the fifth hour they had been sitting on the couch watching documentaries on the universe, and Arthur never thought he would have heard himself say it, but he wished he could just get outside. Or away from Alfred. Or away from the wheel chaired man vomiting up sentences on sentient beings and the creation of galaxies.

"I think I'll go to my room now," Arthur stood up, feet cold against the sheening tile, toe nails stout and broken.

"Oh no way man, the episode on the big bang is on next! Don't you want to see it?" Alfred was still glued to the screen, mouth speaking but eyes whispering curiosity.

"In all honesty, no, I don't."

"Well, you have to stay anyway," Arthur did not like the fact that he was right, and he kicked the ground with bloody cuticles in defiance.

"You're not my babysitter Alfred."

"I kind of am, actually," he finally turned to look at the boy, mouth twitched up to sneer and smirk innocently with supernova lips and telescope glasses, "Come on, you're missing it!" Alfred pat the grating seat next to him, deflating and squeaking as Arthur sat back down and pulled his knees to his chest, face scratched with the rough fabric of his knees.

_"We can imagine the very far future, where science advances to the point where we cannot just manipulate matter locally around us, but we can make entire universes. We could design them, and create them to our liking."_

"What would you put in your universe Arthur?"

"Not you."

Alfred laughed, fingers drumming against his stomach, a beat unknown and distance, falling methodically against the sound of nighttime traffic outside. Arthur tucked his face farther into his knees, pressing the bones deep into his temples, hoping his skull would fragment and dig every memory out of his brain, dripping onto the floor with a sickening, metallic hiss.

"I'd put you in my universe, and I would make you happy," Alfred commented, digging a popcorn kernel out from his teeth with his tongue before continuing, "It could be warm all the time and you could drive a racecar around Saturn's rings, kind of like Rainbow Road? But not as frustrating."

"Sounds stupid," Arthur muttered into his knees, squeezing so hard his leg shook with the crushing strain and the white spots on his eyes crackled and popped.

"Hey, would you stop trying to kill yourself?" Arthur's head was released as Alfred reached over and pushed his legs away, splaying them against the sofa so he could no longer pound the remnants of his mind into dust. "I don't think it would look good on my record if you died under my watch."

Arthur turned his head and watched out of an oblique window as a white figured spiraled past the door, sort of like a comet, or a meteor, or any chunk of space debris that left as soon as it came, stranding Arthur alone in a dark room with a disinfectant clean boy.

"I'll just kill myself later then."

Alfred sighed, running a hand through his now frayed hair, turning the volume on the television down to a besotted roar.

"You need to stop saying things like that."

"And what? And lie? And pretend I want to sit here with you and watch stupid shows about the stupid universe when it doesn't even make sense or matter and it just makes my head hurt. I just want to sleep."

"Arthur, do you need to talk to the doctor?"

"No! I don't want to talk to the doctor, I don't want to talk to anyone, just get away from me, leave me alone."

So Alfred did, mint green scrubs a kings robe that trailed after him as he exited the room in an ignoble manner, creating a bread crumb path of rigid, executive silence that made Arthur shake and tear skin off of his toes.

Alfred was most likely getting a doctor, warning them of Arthur's newest episode, taking his glasses off to clean the defeated stains from the pure lens, wiping away his worn out frowns and replacing them with a fresh, clean smile, leading Arthur to the cramped psychiatric room, puzzles and crayons littering the floor, hand hovering over his back to protect him from his own self.

But unlike the times before, Alfred returned without a white-coated man with slicked hair, instead hauling a mass of hospital quality blankets, faulty and uncomfortable, but daisy crisp as the whole pile was tossed onto Arthur's head, drowning him in a sea of fabric.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" He gasped and grappled until his head was free, growling at the boy stooped humorously over him.

"I figured you might get cold since we're going to be up all night watching this marathon! Share some with me though, alright?"

Arthur sputtered and cried and screamed in disbelief, but nothing could stop Alfred from plopping down next to him and winding the volume up so loud it blocked out the hideous thoughts in Arthur's head.

He knew what he was doing, because the minute the cosmic makeup of the Andromeda galaxy began to filter through the claustrophobic room, Arthur was slumped against his shoulder, leaking saliva and small tears onto Alfred's uniform in a sweet, succulent dream, tossed away from the antiseptic halls and suicide attempts, to a place where he slept on the moon and leapt across the stars. Where when he cried they were not salt water droplets, but tiny pulsars that glittered and exploded and ignited the back of his eyelids in a display of planetary beauty, allowing him to brush nebulas, to swim into the event horizon, disappear far away from the complexity of Earth life and into the simpleness of dark matter, bathed in the otherworldly light of a scientific God.

Because sometimes you did not need razors or once inch of water or a bottle of pills, you did not need an IV or a personalized lunch menu or one hour of yoga a day, you needed the universe and its soothing embrace, like hospital blankets wound around your skin.

* * *

_Hello._

_I wanted to write a lil something for an AU I am working on about the children's mental wing in a hospital. It would be based off of my own experiences in said place, each characters disease(s) spawning out of the people I met there and their stories/demons. It's still very tentative, but I'm sure I'll write more for it in the future._

_Arthur is mostly a self-insert of myself? Alfred being one person cumulating for all of the sweet friends/family members/nurses/doctors/people that helped me through the tough things, whether it be through science television shows or pointless phone calls._

_The quotes are from the show The Universe, the God and the Universe episode. It's my favorite._

_So please review, favorite, and I would appreciate if you told me if you think I should continue with this AU? I have a lot planned for it, but I'm not sure if some people think it's overused or sounds pointless or uninteresting ah I don't know. Please have a good day either way!_


End file.
